Case Detail
Case Title | POITRAS v. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY et al | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
District | District of Columbia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
City | Washington, DC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Case Number | 1:2015cv01091 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date Filed | 2015-07-13 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date Closed | 2018-03-29 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Judge | Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Plaintiff | LAURA POITRAS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Case Description | Laura Poitras, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who had been detained a number of times when returning to the U.S. after international travel, submitted FOIA requests to the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for records concerning herself. None of the components of DHS except for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services responded to her request. CIS said it could find no records and affirmed that decision on appeal. The FBI referred her request to the Executive Office for U.S. Attorney, which located six pages and withheld them entirely under Exemption 3 (other statues). Poitras appealed the decision to the Office of Information Policy, but heard nothing further from that office. ONDI refused to confirm or deny the existence of records. Poitras appealed the decision, but heard nothing further from ONDI. She then filed suit against the three agencies. Complaint issues: Failure to respond within statutory time limit, Litigation - Attorney's fees | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Defendant | DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Defendant | DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Defendant | OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Complaint attachment 5 Complaint attachment 6 Opinion/Order [37] FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Beryl Howell has ruled that the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted an adequate search for records concerning Laura Poitras, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who was routinely pulled aside and interviewed by CBP agents each time she returned to the United States from international travel. During an ambush in Baghdad that killed one soldier and injured several others, two soldiers spotted a woman with film equipment on a nearby roof. The woman was identified as Poitras and she was questioned by a Lieutenant Colonel two days later, at which time she implied that she was not present during the ambush. Based on subsequent interviews with the Lieutenant Colonel and Poitras, an historian provided a sworn statement that he believed Poitras has prior knowledge of the ambush. The FBI opened an investigation and starting in July 2006, Poitras was interviewed by CBP agents whenever she returned from international travel. In 2014, Poitras sent FOIA requests to the FBI, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and CBP for records about herself. The FBI identified 350 responsive pages, released one page in full and 262 pages in part, and withheld in full 87 pages, withholding records under Exemption 5 (privileges), Exemption 7(A) (ongoing investigation or proceeding), Exemption 7(D) (confidential sources), and Exemption 7(E) (investigative methods or techniques). CBP disclosed 220 pages with redactions. However, the agency later located additional records in its New York field office, disclosing 223 pages with redactions and withholding 3,182 pages. Poitras argued that the FBI had not established a connection between Poitras and a legitimate concern that she had violated a federal law or posed a security risk. Howell disagreed, noting that "the FBI has established that its investigation of the plaintiff was realistically based on a legitimate concern that she may have been either an unintentional or unwitting tool to film or otherwise document an ambush that resulted in the death of one American soldier and serious injury to several others." Poitras pointed out that Army investigators had found that there was not enough credible evidence to suggest Poitras had committed a crime at the time the FBI began its own investigation. But Howell observed that "the plaintiff's dissembling about her whereabouts at the time of the fatal ambush and about whether she documented the events, despite two eyewitnesses who saw her on a rooftop over-looking the ambush area with her camera and sound equipment may reasonably have contributed to the FBI's view that an investigation was warranted." Howell explained that "the FBI has established both 'a rational nexus between the investigation and one of the agency's law enforcement duties' and a 'connection between an individual or incident and a possible security risk or violation of federal law,' thereby satisfying the Exemption 7 threshold requirement." After finding the FBI had met the threshold requirement, Howell approved its claims under 7((A), 7(D), and 7(E). Poitras also challenged CBP's search, particularly that of the New York office because it only covered a three-month period and failed to search any other New York field office files. Howell found CBP had appropriately interpreted Poitras' request. She pointed out that "the four corners of the plaintiff's request to CBP did not offer any details about her encounters with airport officials, the locations of those encounters, or the dates for which she expected to find documents pertaining to those encounters. The plaintiff provided a wholly different agency �" USCIS �" with detailed information about several detentions or encounters between herself and CBP officials at airports in Newark and New York City, but these details were not provided to CBP. In fact, USCIS FOIA officials repeatedly informed the plaintiff that she should request any CBP-related information for these specific encounters from the CBP FOIA Division �" not from USCIS, but the plaintiff does not appear to have done so."
Opinion/Order [52]Issues: Exemption 7 - Threshold, Exemption 7 - Law enforcement records, Adequacy - Search FOIA Project Annotation: Judge Beryl Howell has ruled that filmmaker Laura Poitras is not entitled to attorney's fees for her FOIA litigation against the Department of Homeland Security to find out why she was subjected to secondary security screening for every international flight she took to the United States, as well as several international and domestic flights. In total, Poitras was detained for secondary screening more than 50 times over a six-year period. She requested records concerning why she was detained so frequently from DHS. She made FOIA requests to the FBI and the Office of the National Director of Intelligence as well. After the agencies failed to respond to her requests, Poitras filed suit. The FBI located 350 pages, releasing one page in full, 262 pages in part, and withholding 87 pages. Customs and Border Protection released 492 pages from its TECS database, and 220 pages in its Automated Targeting System database. CBP later became aware that its New York office had records related to a 2010 incident at JFK International Airport and ultimately disclosed 223 redacted pages. However, CBP withheld 3,182 pages in full. The Transportation Safety Administration disclosed 21 pages with redactions. Poitras challenged only the adequacy of CBP's search and the appropriateness of the FBI's Exemption 5 (privileges) and Exemption 7 (law enforcement records) claims. Before Howell was assigned the case, the original district court judge found that the agencies' search and exemption claims were insufficiently supported and ordered the agencies to supplement their affidavits. After Howell was assigned to the case, she reviewed the agencies' supplemental affidavits and ruled in their favor. The agencies conceded that Poitras was eligible for fees but argued that she was not entitled to them. Howell first reviewed the public interest in Poitras' request. She agreed that there was some public interest here because of "the plaintiff's notoriety and that the FOIA requests might reasonably have been viewed as likely to shed light on regulation of air travel, a topic of broader public interest. . ." Howell pointed out that "plaintiff's FOIA requests could have been expected to illuminate why someone is designated for 'Secondary Security Screening Selection,' whether the plaintiff's persistent detentions were related to suspicions that she had advance knowledge of a 2004 attack in Iraq that led to the death of an American soldier, or whether the regular stops were connected to the plaintiff's professional work. All three of these possibilities are of public concern." Citing Tax Analysts v. Dept of Justice, 965 F.2d 1092 (D.C. Cir. 1992), Howell observed that "importantly, the D.C. Circuit has disclaimed any automatic rule that a news organization can have no self-interest for making a FOIA request. Journalists, like anyone else, can act with self-interest. Indeed, here, irrespective of her profession, the plaintiff's FOIA requests patently were self-interested." Howell explained that "through her FOIA requests, the plaintiff discovered why she had been stopped at the border for six years. From the beginning, that was the motivation behind her FOIA requests. Nothing is wrong with self-interested FOIA requests, they just are less likely to result in an award of attorney's fees. Consequently, [the personal interest] factor counsels against attorney's fees." Poitras argued that the agencies had been unreasonable by failing to respond to her requests within a reasonable amount of time. While Howell found that "CBP's withholdings come closest to unreasonable," she added that "for the remainder, the withholdings were perfectly reasonable." Finding that only the public interest factor favored Poitras's claim for an award, Howell indicated that "on balance, then the plaintiff has not demonstrated an entitlement to an attorneys' fees award."
Issues: Litigation - Attorney's fees - Entitlement - Personal interest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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